Rebecca Lardner
(9 products)
Rebecca Lardner has the people and places instantly identifiable with Dorset flowing through her veins. She must, in order to commit such descriptive, accurate yet touching and passionate oil illustrations to canvas with such seemingly effortless ease and regularity. Born in Swanage in Dorset in 1971, Lardner’s default artistic preferences are for expertly crafted studies of traditional South-West coast harbour settings and communities that hold as much detail and events as any photograph could ever muster. And boy, does she capture everything. Inspired by the equally busy works of Cornish artist, Alfred Wallis, Lardner also chooses to garner every unique nuance of a real, live, 3-dimensional scene and sprinkle it liberally over each canvas with her pastel shade-dipped oils.
Puffins, gulls and cormorants pepper perspectives that offer artistic license by the bucket’s (and spade’s) worth, harbours that wickedly slope off on largely disproportionate angles into the bay, fishermen’s houses that cling perilously on for dear life as part of the same vista, trawlers circumnavigating over-emotional waves, bustling workaday scenes, which could easily spill over into holidaying spectacles. All angles are covered with aplomb by Lardner, as she leaves not an inch, undocumented with considered daubs of blues, greens and greys, interspersed with indiscriminate flashes of the occasional more vibrant palette choice. Empowered by an underlying sense and understanding of the close-knit communities that comprise the coastlines of the very most South-West of England, Lardner explores the everyday, arguable the mundane, as its creators, passers by and innocent bystanders conduct their business, leisure and pleasure.
In retrospect, it all, at first glance, appears to be a long way from Lardner’s creative education, if not geographically, then definitely commercially, as we learn that Lardner fulfilled the obligations of being commissioned to create album cover, record sleeve and magazine artwork, on the completion of her studies. Originally opting to attend an art foundation course at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design, Lardner went on to gain a BA Honours degree in Illustration at Liverpool John Moores University. What’s more, Lardner has to date, exhibited her collective works in galleries across both Europe and America, and has travelled extensively to experience different lifestyle and cultures that would influence her own signature pieces.
